


We'll Shake the Mountains While We Dance

by Kai_Heartnet



Series: The Boys are Too Refined [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: But since it's space maybe it is chronological?, Drabbles, F/M, Gen, I came out of retirement for this?, I had no clue ~ could be used in tags, If you've never read something by Faulkner you are going to LOVE me, Klance if you tilt your head towards the sun, M/M, Non-Chronological, Rating for eventual language, Sleep-deprived author, There's no real point to this, Translation: It's not a run-on sentence if it's entertaining enough, i hope you enjoy!, poor you, ~ Au, ~Abilities~, ~~~
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 18:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 9,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7518026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kai_Heartnet/pseuds/Kai_Heartnet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The title is from "The Boys are Too Refined" by The Hush Sound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For partial clarity, just about everyone has some kind of ability/affinity that goes along with who they are.
> 
> Shiro- Atmospheric/celestial  
> Pidge- Telekinesis, machines  
> Hunk- Earth  
> Lance- Water  
> Keith- Fire  
> Allura- Telepathy  
> Coran- Figure it out
> 
> (Surprisingly, not as LoK as you'd think)

 

Allura was Altean. They were a race made of peaceful folk; their biggest slight was creating- technically- a giant weapon that could easily destroy several galaxies. They remedied that by giving control of that weapon to five people who were known as the best anything had to offer. The bravest, the smartest, the kindest, the most fearless, the reasonably questionable... This had worked for  _generations_. Voltron had always stood for everything good in the world, so when Allura was awakened from her 10, 000 year nap, of course she assumed that it would still be the same.

Instead, she got a father-figure of an undetermined age, a narcissist with impressive face cream, a literal fireball, a guy who took pet rocks to a whole new level, and a Pidge. Allura actually liked Pidge on most days.

 

~

 

Pidge didn't know if they should focus on the inferno in the training room or the forest in the living room, but they were quite certain there wasn't enough coffee in their system to deal with either, and opted to head for the kitchen to see what passed for caffeine on Altea. They were not disappointed. In less than five minutes, they were sipping on a hot cup of something that hit harder than a freight train and tasted a little like burnt cinnamon while also getting to enjoy the almost lucid feeling of hearing Keith scream in shock as the castle's defenses began to extinguish him. Well, his flames.

"Nothing like the screams of your allies in the morning?"

Allura's voice filtered from their left, and Pidge hummed in as close to friendly as they could manage that early. They hated when their mind was tapped into, but they knew Allura rarely meant it anymore than any of them meant it when their powers went off on their own.

"It's nostalgic," they eventually answered as they started their second cup.

"You often enjoy the sound of your friends screaming?" Allura asked.

Pidge sighed, and it seemed to go on much longer than what should be normal.

"These days, oddly so."

 

~

 

"If you saw his mullet,  _Mamá_ , you would not think he was  _cute_ ," Lance ranted into a puddle he'd made in his sink.

To a random bystander, he would seem insane. To the not so random bystander, he still looked insane. Hunk watched as one of his closest friends groaned before going into an impressive slew of Spanish that was too fast for him to understand. He caught  _pálido_ and maybe something about what was either a hand or a shoulder- Hunk was awful with body parts in Spanish and Lance was an awful teacher when it came to languages.

Lance eventually sighed.

"Tell  _Abuela_ that I love her."

After nodding, he let out the water and looked up into his mirror. He jumped pretty high, and Hunk wondered if it was a weight thing or a Lance thing.

" _Hunk_!" he screeched before quickly piecing everything together. "You heard  _nothing_. You saw  _nothing_."

"I dunno," Hunk shrugged. "I'm pretty sure I saw you talking to your sink."

"How dare you call my mother a sink," Lance gasped indignantly. With him, you never knew if it was sincere or just for a touch of dramatic flare.

"Is this one of those times when you pretend like you weren't doing something super weird and I'm supposed to agree because we're friends but later I'm up really late at night partially because I'm hungry but also because I know I saw you doing something super weird and we can't talk about it as a matter of fact you still haven't explained what happened-"

"-Have you spent so much time in space that you no longer need to breathe?" Lance questioned with wide eyes.

Hunk took that time to breathe.

"-In Vegas."

"I have never been to Las Vegas."

Hunk blinked.

"With you," Lance amended.

"The  _planet_."

"I don't remember it."

"You manipulated the water in the air to destroy a Galra flagship."

"That sounds wild. But I wasn't there."

"It happened last week!"

"Not ringing any bells."

"You screamed, 'I'm King of Vegas!'"

Lance tapped his chin as if he were trying to recall the fiasco that went down on the supposed uninhabited planet a while back. He could easily remember all of it, but he refused to make anything easy.

"Sorry, bud. Maybe you're thinking of someone else?"

Hunk threw his hands in the air before he jabbed a finger at the now-empty sink.

"I know you were talking to your sink."

"Hunk. You sound crazy."

Tiny white flowers bloomed on Hunk's shoelaces before he stormed out, leaving a flower trail in his wake. Lance laughed.

 

~

 

When Shiro was stressed or angry, he was a black hole. Well, it was more that he made them. Small little balls of nothingness bloomed around him, absorbing light and the occasional dust bunny- because even Shiro's stress was a responsible being. When he was excited, little stars danced around him, shrinking and expanding beautifully in a multitude of colors. When he was afraid, lightning crackled around him protectively. That was discovered when he almost fried their boatman when they went to find the Green Lion.

Today, Shiro learned that he made meteorites when he was confused.

Small bits of rock formed and circled around him before falling towards the ground. They got caught in his gravitational field again before they actually hit anything, but they did collide with each other. They continued to do so as Shiro walked through the forest that was once their living room. He could hear someone muttering towards the center, so he followed that.

Eventually, he found Hunk glaring angrily at nothing while little sprouts popped up around him. At the speed they were growing, he'd had to have been there for at least a couple hours. When Shiro spotted him, the meteorites disappeared replaced with mellow clouds that drifted about. They caught Hunk's attention, and his expression quickly changed into something closer to embarrassment.

"In my defense, at least I'm not Keith."

"That's not a very effective argument," Shiro stated in his best dad-voice.

As if on cue, a loud explosion sounded somewhere near their sleeping quarters.

"Getting better every second though," Hunk grinned.


	2. Chapter 2

Keith didn't have anger management problems; Keith had  _people_ problems. He had lived in his shack in the desert for ages without so much as a spark, but whenever he got near another person, he could go from nothing to nuclear in 0.04 seconds.

This was extremely prominent as the castle had to once again put him out after he had walked into the same room as Lance.

He didn't know what it was.

His stupid grin?

His stupid voice?

His stupid pickup lines?

That stupid rival thing?

The fact that he was the one of the only people who never shied away from him despite the fact that it was Keith's third explosion of the day?

Keith didn't know exactly what is was about Lance, but he knew it had gotten a lot worse ever since that incident in the castle where Lance had almost died. Of course, Lance claimed he didn't remember. The only thing "rival" about Lance was how his amnesia rivaled Shiro's.

Today was a rare day, in which Keith had been able to enjoy a full twenty-four hours without igniting anything or anyone. He was usually able to keep it under control as long as Voltron was involved, and they were all still basking in the joy of another victory- Shiro quite literally since a small sun had begun orbiting around his head that he couldn't manage to get rid of. It last all of five seconds as Lance sat beside him and began talking.

"Stop," Pidge interrupted before an actual word could escape Lance's mouth.

The whole team knew what Keith's main trigger was, even if Keith himself hadn't figured out the reason behind it. If Lance wanted to be suicidal, then he shouldn't bring the entire team into it. They were all in various stages of _sprawled_ in the newly mowed- Hunk heard another rock joke- living room, and if Keith exploded it would hit all of them. Just because they  _could_ be healed didn't mean they wanted to be.

"Is this a museum?" Lance ignored them.

"It's the living room," Keith responded.

"Lance, no!" Hunk groaned at the same time even though he was already making himself get up.

Allura and Coran walked into the room.

"Because you're a piece of art and I can't help staring at you."

_Boom_.

 

~

 

Coran wasn't really old. On Altea, he'd barely be considered in his prime. That wasn't the case inside the Castle of Lions. Everyday he was barraged by question after question. At first, he thought it was nice. The humans looked up to him and trusted him to fill in the gaps in their primitive Earth knowledge about space, but after the real questions had been asked and answered- to the best of his abilities- they all began an onslaught of things that barely made sense on a good day.

"Coran, if Allura is the last of Altean royalty, shouldn't she be  _Queen_ Allura?" Lance asked.

_It was a matter of respecting her family_ , Coran would answer.

"If you are fifteen and unaware that you'll die at thirty, does that mean what you thought was an existential crisis was actually a midlife crisis or does it still count as an existential crisis because you don't know you'll die?" Pidge asked.

_..._ Coran would usually take away the strange brew the child had thrown together and called coffee. He didn't know where they had found the ingredients to make it, but it seemed to come in excess, and they rarely gave it up without a significant amount of effort.

"Why doesn't Shiro's lightning strike him?  _He has a metal arm_ ," Hunk informed him, to which Coran could only offer a meaningful pat on the shoulder and a stare filled with intent.

Intent to do what was unclear for both parties.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did this little number on my phone, so I highly apologize if I didn't catch something my auto correct did.

"You called him 'Daddy' and then self-destructed. Literally," Pidge explained, but their words still weren't really hitting Keith just yet. He was still kind of reeling from his time in the healing pod. After a less than enjoyable trip through a wormhole, he felt he deserved props just for staying alive- concussion or not. If he had said some...mildly inappropriate terms between then and now, how could anyone judge him.

He relayed this to Pidge.

"It was four minutes after you fell out of the pod," they deadpanned, and Keith had to give them credit when they were right.

"Do you think Shiro would even remember? You and Hunk call him Dad all the time."

"We say it because he's the Dad Friend. You said it like no one has kinkshamed you in the past year."

Again, Pidge had a point that Keith could not argue.

"...Think it's the worst thing he's ever heard?"

"Well, Lance convinced Allura that saying, 'I could fry bacon on your abs,' was an acceptable compliment on Earth, so probably not the  _worst._ But not the best either."

 

~

 

Shay was naturally good at the whole talking-to-the-land thing. It was probably because she had symbiotic relationship with her home planet, but Hunk had a feeling she'd be good at it regardless.

She was currently teaching him how to sync his breathing with that of a plant while they both adamantly ignored the waterfall flowing in the dining hall. It turned into a languid river by the time it reached them in the living room, and it became harder to ignore.

"Maybe I should go..." Shay began as one of the Altean mice began paddling by using a piece of bread and a breadstick.

"He'll stop eventually," Hunk assured.

Five minutes had barely passed before Lance floated down the river himself, mumbling, "Fucking ponytails."

"I'll fly you home," Hunk sighed.


	4. Chapter 4

"All I'm saying is," Pidge argued, "if you can grow a rose, you can grow a potato. We could be having  _french fries_ right now."

Hunk took a deep breath and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He'd had this argument too many times with too many people. The bright side of repetition was that he finally had the end-all answer to the team's badgering over why he didn't just grow some Earth fruit and vegetables so that their time in space could be a little more bearable.

"Can you make a microwave?" he asked, and Pidge looked positively scandalized.

"You know my powers don't work like that."

Hunk threw up his hands before forcefully gesturing between the two of them.

"Bingo!"

"But you grew a pineapple tree yesterday!" Pidge continued. "We had smoothies and shipped our friends together."

Hunk could not argue with this.

"Have you ever tried to grow a potato?" he asked instead.

"Well, no but-"

"Point made, subject dropped, topic done," he quickly ended and walked off.

End-all answer.

 

~

 

The power to burn hotter than the sun on any given day did not come from Keith's mother. At least, he was pretty sure it didn't. He always guessed it came from the father that had given him up even before his mother had. He didn't know  _what_ his father had been, but he knew he would never be able to trust anyone who could destroy a small village with a sneeze.

It didn't click when Keith turned purple and fuzzy when he was twelve and his foster parents tried to get him headlined on the local news.

It didn't hit him when a mysterious tug pulled him into the desert and showed him a cave with strange drawings.

It didn't register when the man he'd thought dead came crashing from the sky.

Nothing came together until Keith came face to face with a Galran soldier and he saw that same scared twelve-year-old in the blood-thirsty officer before him.

So, Keith figured out where  _his_ powers came from. What was everyone else's problem?

 

~

 

"I feel like I should ask if something is wrong," Allura asked as she watched little meteors crash into and pop the stars floating around Shiro as he let out a sigh too long for the breath that was in his lungs. It would have been endearing if not for the miniature cosmic nightmare unfolding around him.

"I didn't have kids," he explained, and she could already guess where this was headed.

She simply nodded and let him continue.

"I'm too young. Probably?" The question caused one of the broken stars to reform, only to be smashed by another star. They formed a black hole and sucked up a couple meteors before fizzling out.

Allura patted his shoulder comfortingly.

"So why did I just have to tell a fourteen-year-old they weren't allowed to build a taser robot in retaliation to being called short?"

"Someone called Pidge short?" Allura gasped.

_Lance asked them if they were closer to Hell because of their height_.

The thought came as clearly as if Shiro had said it, and Allura also felt the mixture of shock and amusement. Nowhere did she feel any regret Shiro had for being a part of his team. She smiled and gave his shoulder another pat.

"As the mother, I would agree with Pidge, but maybe they should make the robot a drone. It would make for banking the corners easier when Lance tries to run."

Shiro couldn't believe he was nodding in agreement. What had these people turned him into?


	5. Chapter 5

"I feel like my milkshakes could bring the boys to the yard," Lance stated as he absentmindedly toyed with a couple of bubbles.

"Please no," Keith begged from his spot across the room from him. They were both in the training area, supposedly working on meditation. They were the only ones who hadn't mastered seeing through their lions' eyes, and Allura thought if they trained together, their bonds with their lions could become more cohesive. Plus she barricaded the door, and they couldn't get out. She'd done the same when Pidge showed signs of lack of sleep, and trying to oppose her was like trying to attack Shiro. You'd just get hurt and everyone would judge you for it.

"I'm just saying, they're better than yours," Lance shrugged, and Keith did his best to keep his eyes closed.

In all honesty, he had been seconds from falling asleep before Lance said something. If the other paladin sensed it though, he gave nothing away. He was a welcomed distraction for the moment.

"Is this gonna be like that time you kept saying you were blue?"

"Da ba dee da," Lance replied smoothly.

Keith cringed while Lance smirked.

"I could teach you, you know."

"...Teach me what?" Keith asked, and he prayed Lance didn't pick up on his hesitation.

"How to get your milkshakes to bring all the boys to the yard. Of course, I'll have to charge."

Keith's eyes squinted in disbelief.

"Do you even know how to work a blender?"

Lance didn't know if he should laugh or feel bad for him.

 

~

 

Rover 2.0 and Rover 2.5 let out a series of violent beeps while Pidge was head-first in the Castle's back-up crystal generator. It had been Pidge's idea to install- after what happened with Lance and everything- so it was their duty to make sure it was functional as soon as possible. They quickly learned that they couldn't have the others working with them. Shiro was sweet but pretty clueless on anything that wasn't a battlefield, and Hunk couldn't keep his breakfast down whenever the room tilted; Lance and Keith were too busy setting each other off- both literally and figuratively, and Allura was busy trying to make sure they didn't fly into a giant star. Coran checked on them from time to time, but he was always careful to give them their space while they worked.

The Galran attack on the Castle while they were still on Arus hit all of them hard one way or another. It showed them all what could happen if they took any of this lightly, and Pidge especially couldn't let that feeling go easily. Yes, they'd pulled through, but it was mostly luck then. They never wanted to feel like that again.

Rover 2.0 chirped at them, and Pidge gasped.

"Watch your language! Imagine what kind of example you're setting for the baby!"

Rover 2.5 let out a similar chirp, and Pidge sighed.

"See what you did? You're gonna have to be the one to explain why it's a bad word."

An arc of sparks danced around Pidge without their meaning it to, and they immediately felt a wave of frustration. This project wouldn't have taken an Altean a week to complete, but Pidge was almost a month in and had only managed to duplicate the old model. They hadn't managed to improve anything. Rover 2.0 gave a cheerful  _ping_ that was how the machine laughed. Pidge would be offended if they hadn't been the one to make their Rovers.


	6. Chapter 6

When Lance was five, he drowned.

In his bed.

In the middle of the longest drought in California's history.

His father had managed to bring him back from death, and that began what Lance could only describe as the worst ten years of his life. That night, his parents explained to him that their family had been on the wrong side of an honest-to-goodness curse. One of his great-great-so-ons had ticked off the wrong people in Nerja or someplace, and they had cursed the entire bloodline. They were water-bearers.

At five, Lance thought it all sounded like quite the fairy tail. Like all fairy tails, there was always a way to break a curse. A kiss, a promise, true love- there was always a way for the curse to be broken. For Lance's curse, however, it wasn't something so nice. To break the curse on his family, he would have to carve out the heart of his true love and offer it up as an apology. The terms were the same for everyone in his family who bore the curse.

Needless to say, no one had broken the curse. But, like all modern fairy tails, there was a nice silver lining. As long as he focused, controlling the water came as easily as breathing. He rarely drowned himself anymore, and he had even found new techniques he could do that his family had never considered. He'd learned how to talk through the water to his family back on Earth, a solace he wished he could share with the rest of his team, and he'd learned how to heal minor injuries as long as he really focused. He could also shield himself from heavy explosions which came more from necessity than curiosity.

 

When Lance was fifteen, he met Keith.

Call it fate or whatever, but Lance knew the minute he laid eyes on him that there was something between them.

He called it a rivalry.

The Garrison made it easy. They practically forced Lance to compete against Keith for everything he was worth, and often it left him feeling like he wasn't worth much. Still, he wouldn't have traded that first year for anything. It was when he first began looking up to Shiro, who was everything Lance dreamed he could be; and it was when he first met Hunk, who often reminded him it was okay to be who he was, too. After that year, everything twisted.

When Lance was sixteen, he got pushed into the cargo pilot slot. Keith moved up to fighter pilot, and that should have ended their rivalry then. Instead, it brought out the best in Lance. He was so close to joining Keith in the spotlight, he could taste it. Everything was going so right, of course it had to go wrong.

When Lance was seventeen, the Kerberos crew went missing. Keith destroyed any chance he ever had of flying for the Garrison when he heard the news. He exploded right in the cockpit, destroying an eight billion dollar piece of equipment that had taken the Garrison months of negotiating to get. He had been thrown out so fast, Lance hadn't even had a chance to ask what had happened. Suddenly, Lance was tossed into the position he always wanted because of a reason he could never stomach. He hadn't beaten Keith, he just had better control over himself. Or so he thought. That same night, he had nearly drowned.

 

~

 

If Allura  _really_ focused, she could almost drown out the terrified screams of her team as she ran another team-bonding simulation. Of course, she wasn't really in the mood to focus.

Maybe she was naive. That explained a lot of the mistakes she made when it came to her paladins. When she was younger, she remembered how her father's command over his set of paladins were absolute. No one would have questioned him if he had told  _his_ paladins that they should try and survive a week on a semi-hostile planet in order to become closer as teammate. They might have even  _thanked_ her father for the consideration he had put in. But her paladins? They were  _full_ of questions.

"Am I going to have to worry about being eaten by anything?" Pidge had asked the same time Lance asked,

"I'm going to be the first one to be eaten by this planet's idea of a Venus flytrap, aren't I?"

Shiro had asked, "Is this really necessary?"

Allura had felt indignant. He was supposed to be the leader of the team, under only her. He was supposed to trust her with such things, and if he doubted her they all would.

"Can I stay here and...monitor everyone's progress?" Hunk had tried, but he knew where he stood. Where they all did.

Keith didn't manage to ask a question before Allura hit a button on the console and Team Voltron was jettisoned to the foreign planet in an escape pod built under the castle for such things.

 

"Princess, maybe you're being a bit rash?" Coran tried, and Allura could feel her shoulders relaxing despite the anger she still wanted to feel.

"They aren't in any real danger. The worst creature on that planet is a Gorap."

It was the equivalent of a man-eating elephant, and Coran said a quick prayer for the team who were currently being chased by three of them.

"If you say so, Princess."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately, I had to write this one on my phone. I apologize for any errors, and hopefully they'll be fixed by the time I do a sweep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's so short! I hate posting on my phone.

"By Jove, I think you're on to something, Pidge!" Hunk exclaimed in the same accent he used for his Allura and Coran impressions.

The something Pidge was on to was using their already evident connection to the Castle to create a communication system like the Balmerans have on their planet. While it wouldn't mean much for the rest of the crew right then, it could come in handy if Pidge ever needed to spy. Of course, they didn't tell Hunk that was the reason.

"Can you talk to your Rovers from here?" he asked.

They were settled close to the crystal chamber, the heart of the Castle, while most of the Rovers were either in One of the rooms Pidge had converted into their own lab or roaming about for security. It would be the perfect test.

They placed their hand on the metal wall and felt as their mind connected with the circuits of the Castle.

It hummed when they connected, and now it kind of asked kind of requested that Pidge need something. Metal was like that. It was a yes or maybe kind of material, but never a no. It never asked for much, but it also rarely gave. Except for Pidge. Metal, circuitry, anything electronic, responded to Pidge like a child would to their parent. The Castle, though alien, was no different.

 _Can you link me with Rover 5?_ Pidge asked sweetly.

The Castle hummed, and suddenly it was like Pidge was in the training area. Lance was the only one there, sparring with the gladiator. They could even feel it even though the training robot should have been well out of their range.

Suddenly, they were back near the crystal chamber, staring at Hunk.

"Did it work?" he grinned knowingly.

Pidge matched his expression.

"I might have a chance to go mad with power now."

"While that sounds like a very noble aspiration, the sensors just picked up a distress beacon near a planet called Vega. All hands on deck," Coran called over the speakers.

Pidge and Hunk both turned a little red at being caught.

 

 ~

 

In some far off galaxy, light years away from anyone that could possibly care, Keith kissed Lance.

He hadn't meant to. He knew there was a betting pool against who would kiss who first and why, and he had really wanted Allura to win. She had bet Keith would kiss Lance after Lance finally beat him in a sparring match. She'd promised him a cut of the winnings if she did.

It turned out Shiro won because he had seen it coming a mile away. He said after an argument, Keith would either explode and kill him, or they'd make out.

Again, Keith hadn't meant to.

Lance had been going on and on about how Keith's explosions were symbolic or whatever, and Keith had been staring at his mouth the whole time. It was almost hypnotic the way he released each syllable, and for some reason, Keith's mind couldn't grasp how so many words could form from the same movement.

Then Lance said his name.

Keith flushed.

Lance was unapologetic. He watched Keith watch his mouth, and he knew exactly what would set him off.

They both expected an explosion.

Lance because he was always a masochist when Keith wad involved, Keith because anytime he was around Lance he eventually exploded. It was symbolic.

Nothing happened, and Lance was a little offended. Keith was relieved.

Lance had said something then, Keith was almost certain, but it was lost as Keith realized that he wasn't on fire. He wasn't on fire and Lance's mouth was still doing that thing with words-

 _Talking-_ his brain supplied eventually, and one of those things needed to change.

So Keith stopped him from talking.

And Shiro got to gloat.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is even more random than usual.

It started with little bubbles.

They flitted around and popped harmlessly throughout the Castle, so no one really thought anything about it. They'd seen planet-sized aliens, space witches, Coran's cooking... Nothing surprised them anymore. A few bubbles didn't even register on the paladins' radar.

Then there were leaks. Everywhere.

 

Keith guessed it was the equivalent of his explosions. Sudden rivers and impossible ponds formed overnight, and it took days for them to dry out. He didn't know what could have Lance so wound up that he lost control. Usually he was the more cool-headed of the pair. Like he always did when he didn't understand something, Keith tried to kill it with fire.

 

Lance was trying to control himself. He really was. But it was like something was calling to him from the planet they were approaching. It was mostly water, and his blood sang the closer they got to it. It made sleeping difficult, and he was completely prepared to blame that as the reason why he stared at Keith for long periods of time. He wasn't being creepy, he just couldn't focus with so few hours of sleep. Not everyone could be like Shiro after all.  _He_ seemed to consist of nothing but Dad Vibes and Perfection.

It was during one of those times when Lance was zoning out and (hopefully) thinking to himself that Keith should put his hair up more when said paladin walked into the living area where Lance was. He then promptly slipped on the puddle Lance had unconsciously formed in front of the door.

" _Lance_ ," Keith growled, and the puddle immediately grew into a shallow lake. It would take days to dry the furniture. Neither was thinking of that as Lance's face turned bright red. Keith exploded.

 

~

 

"We are  _not_ going to eject Shiro into  _space_ ," Hunk stated firmly. They were all gathered in the bridge, and none of them could say it was the worst conversation they had had about their leader.

"He probably wouldn't even notice," Coran tried.

"No," Hunk stayed adamant.

"It'd just be until he felt better," Allura added.

" _No_."

"Didn't he help you mow the training room after you thought Shay broke up with you?" Lance asked.

"Well, yeah-"

"So you should be the first one offering to shoot him into space!" Lance yelled while throwing his hands up.

"It's not the same!" Hunk argued.

"We could tell him it's a training exercise. When he comes in, we could hit the emergency eject button."

Pidge's voice was far too calm given the situation, and Allura heard everyone mentally remove Pidge from their emergency contacts lists.

"Just curious, but has anyone actually checked if Shiro can breathe in outer space?" Keith questioned.

Hunk nodded vigorously.

"That is exactly my point! You could kill him!"

That seemed to bring everyone to their senses. At least, until Shiro walked in.

He was wrapped in a fluffy blanket Lance had knitted and was sipping on what Pidge had dubbed as Altean coffee. He had caught some kind of cold while they were on that planet last week, and he absolutely refused to let that slow him down. That meant two things.

The first was that there was no chance he was going to get any better.

The second was that there was every chance he was going to give it to the rest of Team Voltron.

He sneezed and the entire crew jumped back. The emergency eject hatch opened and in a blink Shiro was gone.

"I didn't do it!"

Everyone's hands were up except Pidge's. They shrugged.

"He can bench press Hunk and create suns and black holes. I'm sure he'll be fine."

Shiro was, in fact, not fine. He lost his fluffy blanket.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! I've been knitting. Thanks so much for the comments! Please enjoy this mini-chapter until I finish at least the knit-bunny. I'll make up for it soon!!

"Paladins!"

Allura's voice was filled with what could be called- if she were any other person- fear. As she had spent more than a year playing friend, foe, and occasional babysitter to five natural disasters, one could only believe the emotion in her tone was something akin to panic. She panicked a lot lately.

The cause of her distress was the constant firing from Zarkon's flagship on the Castle. She was about to have to send her brave warriors out to defend the closest thing to home any of them had left in space, and she didn't want them to go out alone.

"These amulets are meant to strengthen your bond with your lions and with each other. Wearing them will make it easier to form Voltron and maybe we can defeat Zarkon here and now."

"Will we be able to read each other's minds?" Keith asked nervously. Lance grinned.

"You wanna know what I'm thinking?"

"We  _all_ know what  _you're_ thinking, Lance," Pidge sighed as they pulled their necklace over their head. It pulsed a dark green when they touched it and warmth flooded their head for a few seconds. "...Wow..."

Everyone began slipping theirs on, each enjoying the comfort the amulets gave.

Except Shiro.

"Princess, can I ask you something?"

Allura blinked at him. She  _did_ know what everyone was thinking, and what she'd heard from Shiro's head was not something she needed tossed aloud.

"I'd really rather you not."

"It's important," he insisted.

"It really isn't."

"Just- why is my amulet  _purple?_ "

Little black holes blinked in and out of existence, and Allura could not believe- with them under  _attack_ and in danger of  _dying_ \- that this is what Shiro chose to give his attention to.

"It represents the Black Lion," she replied through gritted teeth.

"But it's purple."

"Maybe this can be saved until  _after_ we aren't being attacked by Zarkon's forces?" Allura smiled sweetly.

 

They were in Voltron and Zarkon had sent out some kind of squid-robot-thing to try and kill them. It was a difficult battle that deserved all their attention.

"All I'm saying is, no one calls Barney a black dinosaur," Shiro stated.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long to update! Thanks so much for all the reviews! I ended up knitting seven terrifying little bunnies. HAPPY EARLY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!!!!!

"If that is a Ouija board, I am going to divorce you," Keith stated calmer than one should after walking in on his boyfriend bowing in a dark room.

Lance was surrounded by the candles they'd made in "anger management"- Shiro's idea after one of Keith's explosions almost took his other arm off- and a hand-carved board sat in front of him.

"Is that a marriage proposal?" Lance smirked. In the candlelight, his smile seemed too sharp, his eyes too hollow. He looked like a dark copy of the Lance he was used to, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Lance held out a hand to him, and his fingers seemed too thin, too long.

"Who do I look like? Victor van Dort?" Keith scoffed, and Lance loved that he knew that reference. He'd come a long way from desert shacks and lone wolves. Despite his words, Keith took the offered hand.

"Have you ever done this before?" Lance half-asked, half-whispered.

A circle of fire burned around them as Keith's face flushed.

"Used a Ouija board," he clarified, and the ring of fire sputtered in Keith's best attempt to make it go out.

"I knew what you meant," he lied.

Before Lance could use the opening to tease, the metal triangle he'd found in Pidge's lab began to move. When it didn't quite get their attention, it slammed against the board before moving again.

"It's trying to tell us something!"

"Y-O-T...?" Keith read aloud, and the triangle quickly slid across the board to fix itself.

" _You_ ," Lance gasped.

The board continued to speak to them.

A-R-E-I-D-I-O-T-S.

" _Lance_ ," Keith groaned, and they heard Pidge's snickers from the ventilation system.

 

~

 

Shay was completely confused as she watched the Paladin Lance continue to build a little home for the mice in the tree Hunk had accidentally made the night before in the living room. It was an impressive house, with a porch and swing and even a mailbox. The first thing Shay wondered was what the mice would do once the tree had to be cut down. The second thing she wondered was why every time she came to the Castle of Lions, she found herself talking to Lance.

"I'm being serious," Lance tried. His voice gave nothing away as he fiddled with the miniature doorbell. Shay expected sparks. When someone like Lance meddled with electric systems, there should be sparks. There were no sparks.

"So I should use this Earth phrase as greeting whenever Hunk enters a room?" Shay grasped, and she'd be lying if she said that she wasn't disappointed at the lack of sparks.

"I'm telling you, Shay, it'll make him happy. Trust me. On Earth, they called me the  _Knitter_ because of how well I stitched relationships together."

"I thought that was because you knitted fifteen blankets in two days instead of studying for you flight test," Hunk laughed as he walked through the door.

"If you were a..." Shay looked to Lance who mouthed the rest of the phrase for her. "If you were a fruit, you'd be a fine-apple."

Tiny rosebuds filled the entire castle.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the comments and kudos! I'm sorry it's taking me so long to update!!
> 
> (Note: I can say the below statement because I am both from Alabama and have indeed vacationed in Alabama several times.)
> 
> Also, I'm terribly sorry Hunk's part is so short! After NaNo I promise I'll try to make it up to you all!!

"I'm not saying it's not partially to blame-" Keith thinks Hunk explained. It was hard to hear him through the Venus flytrap's mouth, but Keith was pretty sure excuses had a universal tone. The plant gave Hunk an experimental shake and a little more of him disappeared into its mouth. All that was visible to him was Hunk's lower body now. The fact that Pidge was somewhere deeper inside made Keith a little more determined to just light the plant on fire instead of...whatever Hunk was trying to do.

Keith didn't know where Lance was, and because of that, there was a fifty-fifty chance he had been eaten by the plant earlier that day when Hunk had made it in lieu of the alien puppy he wanted to adopt. He hadn't seen Shiro in awhile either, but he figured he would have cut his way out of the flytrap long before he let the thing make its way through half his team.

"Did you know that the Venus flytrap's name is actually really just a declaration of love?" Hunk asked as he popped himself out of the mouth. His hands were holding Pidge's feet, but the rest of them were still trapped. " _Venus_ refers to the Roman goddess of love, while its genus name,  _dionaea_ , means 'daughter of Dione' which is Aphrodite."

"Real romantic," Keith snarked as more of Pidge became visible.

"All I'm saying is, don't judge a flower by its petals," Hunk grinned as he managed to yank an unconscious Pidge out.

"Are you going to tell Pidge that when they wake up?"

"No, I'm going to tell them that they ate a hallucinogenic berry in the salad I made them for lunch. This never happened."

 

~

 

It started with tulips.

Hunk and his family were on vacation in Alabama- though no one vacations in Alabama, it's an accident or it's deceit, but it is not a vacation- when Hunk's mother fell in love with the pink tulips sitting in a tiny little gift shop near some train tracks. Hunk was ten, old enough to go into a shop alone but young enough not to be allowed to, when he decided his mom  _needed_ those tulips. But, as tiny little gift shops near train tracks are apt to do, the shop closed at six. It was six-thirty.

That night, Hunk watched silently as pink tulips blossomed on his hotel mattress. He would have been shocked if not for the fact that his mom  _needed_ those tulips and he didn't turn down things that his family needed. So that morning, he gave her the pretty bouquet and never told her where they came from.

Hunk learned two things that day:

You never vacation in Alabama, and it wasn't a hotel maid's job to mow the mattress.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the comments and the kudos!! You're all so kind! I'm sorry for all the mistakes!! Have some Klance for your troubles!

"For the record, I did not spend a year tortured both physically and mentally, hijack and pilot an alien ship, get drugged, fly through the desert _unconscious_ -"

"-I'm not sure how you would know that part happened," Pidge interrupted.

"-ride Mother Nature's water slide-" Shiro continued.

"-That sounds awful in the best way," Lance winked at Keith across the room.

"-and eventually lead a group of the human equivalent of anxiety to be told there is no alien equivalent to eyeliner, Princess."

"Shiro-" Allura tried.

" _Allura_ ," he countered, little stars blossoming into black holes around him. She sighed.

"I'll see what I can do."

"I feel like that was just an excuse for a recap."

Keith's comment was ignored.

 

~

 

 

 

Blue was the friendliest lion, but she _never_ forgot. Anything. Lance learned this when he decided to practice piloting her early in what everyone had silently agreed was morning. His face was still gleaming and his feet were still clad in the blue lion slippers he'd made during a particularly stressful night. Blue had let him in like she always did, and she flew like she always did. She also projected her emotions to him like she always did, and Lance didn't appreciate the indignant tone she was taking.

Sometimes, if he wasn't really focusing, he could hear- or feel, he wasn't sure- Blue's voice. He could pick up words, and for the past seven months, she had been going off about how she had the most ridiculous pilot. It hurt a little.

It was during one of those times when Lance's mind was wandering when he felt Blue sense Keith entering the hangar with them. He felt her asking something, but all he could really make out was "Pick up lines."

"Are you asking me to ask him out?" Lance whispered. Keith had given him a quick wave before he made his way to Red to check on his stats.

_Yes_.

It was the clearest message Lance had ever gotten from his lion, and he'd be excited if it weren't for the reason. His gaze went from Blue to Keith slowly tapping on Red's diagnostics screen.

"He has a mullet, Blue."

Blue growled and a lazy river cut across the hangar.

"Are...Are you okay?" Keith felt he had to ask. He knew Lance was one of the few members of Team Voltron that usually had a perfected handle on his powers. If a river was flowing or puddles suddenly just appeared, it usually meant something pretty rough was going on with him. Still, Keith wasn't one for this kind of thing. He was more "Blow it up or beat it up," and everything else was just too much. But, he had to ask.

Lance took a deep breath before going forward.

"Why do you explode every time I try to talk to you?"

Keith hadn't been prepared for the subject to get switched to him, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't stutter when he got his answer out.

"Be-because you do that-that thing all the time!"

"'Thing?'" Lance smirked. "Do you mean talk?"

Keith scoffed so loud it echoed.

"What you do is  _not_ talking. You  _talk_ to Hunk and Pidge. What you do to me-"

"-I would  _love_ to do some things to you."

Keith pointed forcefully and little sparks danced around his fingers. Lance quickly put up his guard in case he really did set Keith off again.

"You don't like it when I flirt with you?"

"It's not- no, I just- you do that with lots of people and not-people and just- I don't understand-"

At some point, Lance had made his way fully across the hangar. He had never really noticed the height difference between him and Keith, or the way heat seemed to roll off him in waves, or how easy it was to kiss in the middle of an explosion. Lance could feel more than hear Blue's words of approval. She was never going to forget this.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your patience with this chapter! I'm so sorry it took me so long to update! Thanks also for the kudos and the comments!
> 
> I'm at that level of tired where normal sentences look wrong and wrong sentences look even worse, so I'm gonna cross my fingers that this is readable, and I'll come back later and clean it up. (Like I say about all the chapters and never do.)

"I need to talk to your boyfriend," Pidge stated flatly.

Keith looked appalled. He knew he was dating Lance, and their lions knew they were dating, but they hadn't told anyone else yet. It was more for Keith's sanity than any kind of privacy- nothing stayed private when Allura was determined- so his mind couldn't register that  _Pidge_ already knew.

"Boyfriend?" he managed to cough out, but his mind wouldn't supply anything else.

"Your life partner, your soulmate, your whatever-you-need-to-label-yourselves, I don't care. _Lance_. I need to talk to him before he destroys the Castle."

" _Lance_?" Keith questioned. A thousand different scenarios ran through his mind, but none ended with Lance single-handedly capable of destroying the Castle.

" _Yes Lance_. The last time I saw him was through Rover 14. He was headed towards one of my labs. I went to go see what he was up to, and something...dangerous...was missing from my lab."

"Dangerous?"

"Are you going to play parrot or are you going to tell me where I can find him?" Pidge growled.

Some would think it was hard to be terrifying when you barely came up to someone's shoulder. Pidge did not. Still, Keith couldn't sell Lance out that easily.

"Parrot?" Keith scoffed indignantly.

Pidge used her bayard to taze him before continuing her search.

 

~~~

 

Coran sat back and watched as Hunk, Lance, and Keith made a little island in the training area. Their heads were close together as they discussed how it would be shaped and where rivers should flow. Keith wanted a volcano but it was vetoed due to health risks for the robotic animals they were planning on asking Pidge to make.

"Hawaii has volcanoes," Keith argued.

"So did Pompeii," Lance shot back, using the majority of his focus not to flood the landmass they had settled in the miniature ocean he had originally created to push Keith into before he had decided it could be put to a better use.

"You think Shiro could make a sun and moon for it?" Hunk asked as he worked to sprout little trees. Scale was not his strongest suit, but island-making was great training for all of them.

"He's still bitter about his blanket," Lance shrugged. The river he had been leading through Hunk's forest overflowed and created a mudslide.

"He's the leader. Leaders can't be bitter about blankets," Coran threw in. The look the trio gave him revealed a different truth. Coran chuckled before adding, "Perhaps I'll have a talk with him. It's just as important for the paladins to bond with each other as it is to bond with your lions after all."

The moment Coran began to walk away, the fighting began.

"It should have a volcano!"

"Did you just destroy lower Hunktopia?"

"Dude, I can't believe you were serious when you named it that."

"I'm making a volcano."

" _Get your molten rock out of my ocean_."

_Baby steps_ , Coran thought to himself.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR'S!!
> 
> (I'm not necessarily sleep-deprived this time, but the mistakes are still accidental.)
> 
> Sorry it's so short! There isn't a ~~~ this time because it's only a half chapter.

"No, _Mama_ , I don't think mullets are sexy," Lance groaned into the bathroom sink.

His mom had been as strong an advocate as Blue when it came to him asking Keith out. It was partially because she was the only one he could really vent to without fear of it somehow reaching the others, but mostly because his mother had been hearing about "Mullet-boy" since Lance's very first days at the Garrison. She had seen yearbook photos and sat up into the early morning hours because her son was in denial about his feelings.

To her credit, she didn't care nearly as much that Keith was a boy as she did that her son was mostly unchaperoned in distant space with said boy. She would love to say that she raised her son to be a gentleman, but she had video evidence of the reason why she sent him to the Garrison in the first place. She could only hope he was at least being safe so far from home.

"I asked if you thought  _Mullet-boy_ was sexy," she repeated, the water in the sink rippling with her words.

Lance was silent, too silent for a mother's liking, before he finally responded.

"I gotta go. Uh...Space- space stuff to take care of, you know... Love you!"

" _Mijo_ -"

Lance cut the connection and drained the water before she could continue. He knew he would pay for it later, but he had gotten better at recognizing the sound of footsteps outside his bedroom door.

"Who are you talking to?" Keith asked as the door swished open. Everyone knew Lance never locked his door, but it was still common decency to knock. Keith never considered himself common and so did not knock.

"I wasn't talking to anyone?" Lance tried. It had worked on Hunk.

"...Is this one of your water things?"

"I would make a comment but I can't afford for you to explode in my room," Lance smirked before he led Keith out by his hand.

To Keith's credit, he  _almost_ didn't blush. Lance winked at him after they crossed the threshold.

"Though I don't mind making you explode in your room."

To Keith's credit, he  _almost_ didn't take out half of the Castle.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's pretend this was written like three hours ago. Also, I apologize for my generalization of space magic.

"A national holiday?" Allura asked slowly. The skepticism in her voice was matched only by the vastness of space.

To their credit, both Pidge and Lance flashed perfect Boy Scout signs. Granted, neither of them had ever been a boy scout- Lance for personal reasons and Pidge for technical reasons. Allura was unfamiliar with their reasons and with the symbol of honesty, but she could feel the earnest determination rolling off of both of them.

It didn't help that both their minds were only filled with, "Hunk Day Hunk Day Hunk Day," on a constant track. Still, it was hard to accept that Hunk's birthday had been accepted by their entire country.

"Come on, Allura. No one should have to run drills on their birthday," Lance pleaded in a tone he usually reserved for talking to Blue.

"For as long as we were in the Garrison, we  _always_ took Hunk's birthday off. If it  _isn't_ a holiday, it's at least tradition," Pidge added, noting that Allura's defense was beginning to crumble. They knew she tried hard to help them maintain a portion of their Earth lives, and tradition was a keyword with her.

" _Fine_ ," she caved. "Though you must promise me this: if Zarkon attacks, you will not hesitate to take action."

Both of the paladins scoffed.

"You are underestimating Hunk Day. Even aliens take his birthday off," Lance grinned.

"I hear even Alteans celebrate it now," Pidge added.

Allura laughed.

 

~~~

 

The first time Shiro's ability appeared, he thought he was hallucinating. He was locked in a pitch black cell while they waited for his body to either accept his new prosthetic or for it to kill him. The neverending pain made hallucinations a welcomed reprieve, and he wasn't ashamed to admit that he'd experienced more than a few during those long...hours? Days? He didn't know how long he was in that cell, but it felt like centuries passed with nothing but the darkness and the pain as his cellmates.

It was during one of his more lucid moments that Shiro saw tiny stars flicker before him. They danced just within his vision, though they could have been behind him and the light would have still hurt his now-sensitive eyes. When he acknowledged them, they disappeared. It was enough to convince him that they were indeed just hallucinations conjured up by his exhausted brain, but they appeared again once he had written them off as such.

They were brighter, and they shone with an almost indignant light. This time when they disappeared, they made audible pops- as if Shiro couldn't write off their existence if he heard them as well as saw them. When Shiro managed to convince himself that it was nothing but his mind playing tricks again, a star the size of his fist grew in the middle of the room. It began as nothing more than colorful fog and twisted into a ball that burned too bright for Shiro to look at directly. It grew impossibly bright before it finally just- stopped. The room returned to pitch blackness, and the darkness seemed even more so after the light of the miniature sun. Shiro stared at the space where the sun had been, and the darkness there seemed tangible. For a terrifying moment, Shiro wondered if it had left a black hole. He doubted there were vents in the cell. If it devoured all the oxygen, he'd be just as dead as if the robotic arm had killed him itself. Moments ticked by to the pace of Shiro's heartbeat, but he felt no pull that he would have expected to feel if there were a black hole a few feet away from him.

Shiro began to become more aware of the pain where his arm met metal, and he attributed all of what he'd seen to a poor mental state. When he did, angry little stars danced before him.

 

~~~

 

Zarkon didn't miss much. He noticed the way his drones twitched into attention at his approach. He noticed the grit to some of his soldiers' teeth when he gave an order to destroy a world. He noticed that Haggar sometimes tuned him out when he was monologuing through the galaxies. He had noticed when a force as strong as a white dwarf had suddenly grown in the Champion's quarters while he was in their care. He also noticed the care that the Champion had taken to ensure his shipmate didn't share his fate in the ring.

Zarkon didn't trust humans. They were sneaky little things that tested both his patience and his lifespan, and he would rather see them dead than anything else. They made for good entertainment; however, and that included in and out of the arena.

When the Champion whispered his hopeful message, Zarkon didn't miss it.


End file.
